Books

Having seen the trend of book-culling passing through Charles' and Cliff's blogs... I sort of shudder in horror. I've got two bookshelves, one tall, the other a two shelf half-size thing that my mother bought for me when I was little and she thought that was 'enough books'.

There are never enough books.

However, there are enough that I have to keep. It's a somewhat smaller number. But still large enough that I found a program online to catelog my books so I can assign them numbers and boxes and put them in the garage.

Culling happens when I need something to return to the used book store, or the romance novels are piling up. But still, horror of horrors. I'm a rereader. I'll reread something many, many times.

The record, for now, is Jurassic Park. I got the book new, the summer the movie came out. It is now covered in duct tape and the pages are falling out. It survived, um, 18 rereadings in a row. (It might have been more but I can't recall now) I'd get to the end, shut the book, and open it again. Again and again and again, all in one summer (being defined as the months I spent in Florida with my father between school).

Probably a close runner up on rereads is Companions of the Night by Viviane Vande Velde. It's probably the open ending on the book that draws me back again. Of course, that book also spawned an incredible number of fanfics from yours truly. When I was organizing all the stuff I've written on paper I had to dedicate a whole stack of folders and notebooks just to Companions fic. Sigh, how I miss you High School.



Or, for instance, I was cooking dinner the other night on the stove. Something about it reminded me of Sunshine, the baker in Robin McKinley's novel of the same name. The main character is a baker who winds up kidnapped by (bad) vampires, for the purpose of feeding to another (good) vampire- The good vampire refuses to eat her, on principle (please don't think Mopey Vampire, like Angel or Louis). They escape, adventure, yadda, yadda... I'm cooking and suddenly I *have* to reread the part where Sunshine and Connie (short for Constantine, the good vampire) have their first chat and he says, "Speak. Remind me that you are a rational creature."

Something about that line just sends a shudder down my spine. The bad vampires have starved and beaten him, and he's still trying to hold out against them, even though they've just thrown him a human. Willpower. Strength of character. Or maybe it's the Sheherezad part, because she has to talk to stay alive.

I burned dinner because I went upstairs to find my copy of the book, and then I stood on the landing, having flipped to that well-read page, and read. Dinner burned. *fwoosh*